I remember watching Kate Bush on Saturday Night Live in 1978. Just this wild girl dancing on a piano while Paul Shaffer played. It was mesmerizing. It wasn’t until 1982 that I heard her again. I was in Oxford in England and someone in the dorm was playing Kate Bush on his record player. I asked who it was, because I remembered it from four years earlier. I bought the three albums she had out at the time and listened to them obsessively.
I bought The Dreaming as soon as it was released. I listened to it once, said “Huh” and put it back on the shelf. Six weeks later, I finally listened to it again, said “Huh” again and put it back on the shelf, this time for three weeks, then a week and a half, and soon I was listening to it daily. My “Huh” had turned to “Wow”. It was probably the most densely layered album I’d ever heard, and one of the most inaccessible. But I kept at it and it was worth it. It remains my favorite album by her, and an easy top 20 in my favorite albums list.
